Prime Minister Narendra Modi poses for a photo with media tycoon Rupert Murdoch and other media honcos before a round table meeting ‘Media, technology and communication – Growth story for India’ in New York on Thursday. PTI

New York: Presenting India as a technology-driven society, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday pledged protection to Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) as he met top executives of major media and communication companies here.

“This is a technology-driven era. We are a technology-driven society,” he said at a round table meeting with the top executives of companies like Comcast, Time Warner, Discovery, Sony, ESPN, News Corp, 21st Century Fox, Disney Industries, ABC television group.

The focus of the Prime Minister’s meeting with over dozen media honchos was to understand about the trends in media and communication technologies and the opportunities for India.

“We are committed to protecting IPR which is essential to fostering creativity,” Modi told them at the round table on Media, Tech & Communications.

Describing India as the ‘biggest market’, America’s media honchos have called for speedier digitisation of the Indian system, including early expansion of the 4G network, during a one-of-its kind meeting with PM Narendra Modi.

During the meeting wherein the focus was on the role that the media and entertainment industry can play in development and generation of employment opportunities in the country, CEOs of the top media houses appreciated Modi for ‘energetic and dynamic leadership’ and expressed optimism about the future of India, a statement said.

The CEOs representing 40 per cent of the world’s entertainment industry – were enthusiastic about the digital transformation that is taking place in India through the ‘Digital India’ initiative.

They said that the current strong trajectory of the Indian economy makes it at a unique moment to accelerate growth in this sector.

“All of them said India is the biggest market for them in terms of the phenomenal growth of the entertainment channels, in terms of the youth in India wanting more such content. They asked for speedier digitisation of the Indian systems,” External Affairs Minister spokesperson Vikas Swarup told reporters.

Shane Smith for instance, said that he wanted rolling out of the 4G systems as soon as possible. This is the bandwidth that they need for their program contents to be rolled out and to reach people as fast as possible.

All the CEOs said that India is already a big market for them and they do not have any issues with the existing norms.

“What they wanted was speedier expansion of broad band infrastructure,” he said.

“The Prime Minister and CEOs observed that the changes in technology and media in recent times have led to an enormous democratisation of knowledge. He said that the world is now in a technology- driven era, where growth of digital infrastructure is as important as growth of physical infrastructure,” Swarup said.

A Cairo court has sentenced three Al Jazeera journalists to three years in jail after finding them guilty of “aiding a terrorist organisation”.

Egyptian Baher Mohamed, Canadian Mohamed Fahmy and Australian Peter Greste were all handed three-year jail sentences when the court delivered the verdict on Saturday, sparking worldwide outrage.

Mohamed was sentenced to an additional six months for possession of a spent bullet casing.

The journalists had been initially found guilty in June 2014 of aiding a “terrorist organisation”, a reference to the Muslim Brotherhood, which was outlawed in Egypt after the army overthrew President Mohamed Morsi in 2013.

Judge Hassan Farid, in his ruling on Saturday, said he sentenced the men to prison at least partly because they had not registered with the country’s journalist “syndicate”.

He also said the men brought in equipment without security officials’ approval, had broadcast “false news” on Al Jazeera and used a hotel as a broadcasting point without permission.

The verdict was immediately condemned by Al Jazeera Media Network’s Acting Director General Dr Mostefa Souag, who said: “Today’s verdict defies logic and common sense. Our colleagues Baher Mohamed and Mohamed Fahmy will now have to return to prison, and Peter Greste is sentenced in absentia.

“The whole case has been heavily politicised and has not been conducted in a free and fair manner.”

Dr Souag continued, “There is no evidence proving that our colleagues in any way fabricated news or aided and abetted terrorist organisations, and at no point during the long drawn out retrial did any of the unfounded allegations stand up to scrutiny.

“A report issued by a technical committee assigned by the court in Egypt contradicted the accusations made by the public prosecutor and stated in its report that the seized videos were not fabricated.

Shocked. Outraged. Angry. Upset. None of them convey how I feel right now. 3 yr sentences for @bahrooz, @MFFahmy11 and me is so wrong.

“Baher, Peter and Mohamed have been sentenced despite the fact that not a shred of evidence was found to support the extraordinary and false charges against them.

“Today’s verdict is yet another deliberate attack on press freedom. It is a dark day for the Egyptian judiciary; rather than defend liberties and a free and fair media, they have compromised their independence for political reasons.”

Speaking from Sydney, Greste labelled the verdict “outrageous”.

“We did nothing wrong. The court presented no evidence. For us to be convicted as terrorists is outrageous. It can only be a political verdict. This is unethical,” Greste said.

Al Jazeera’s next step is to file an appeal before the Court of Cassation. Such an appeal should be filed within 60 days.

In January, an appeals court ordered a retrial, saying the initial verdict lacked evidence against the three journalists working for the Doha-based network’s English channel.

The journalists and Al Jazeera have vigorously denied the accusations during the trial.

Ten previous sessions in the court had all been adjourned.

Greste has already been deported to his native Australia under a law allowing the transfer of foreigners on trial to their home countries, but he was retried in absentia.

Fahmy and Mohamed were on bail ahead of the verdict after spending more than 400 days in detention.

The Cairo court said on Saturday that the previous time spent in prison will be accounted for as time served.

Fahmy renounced his Egyptian nationality hoping he too would be deported.

Canadian Minister of State Lynne Yelich issued a statement after Saturday’s verdict calling on Egyptian authorities to release Fahmy.

“Canada is disappointed with Mohamed Fahmy’s conviction today. ‎This decision severely undermines confidence in the rule of law in Egypt,” Yelich said.

“The government of Canada continues to call on the Egyptian government to use all tools at its disposal to resolve Mr Fahmy’s case and allow his immediate return to Canada.”

The three men have received support from governments, media organisations and rights groups from around the world.

New Delhi: Veteran journalist, author and anti-nuclear activist Praful Bidwai has died at the age of 64 during a visit to the Netherlands.

Bidwai died in Amsterdam on Tuesday evening due to a cardiac arrest, family friend Pamela Philipose told media.

Bidwai was a fellow at Transnational Institute at Amsterdam, an organisation of international scholar-activists.

He was a regular contributor to magazines and newspapers, besides being a leading anti-nuclear activist.

He also wrote a number of books, including the 1999 New Nukes: India, Pakistan and Global Nuclear Disarmament.

His latest book on the crisis in the Indian Left was due to be released later this year.

After working as a senior editor for the Times of India for a number of years, Bidwai became a freelance commentator, writing for publications in India and abroad.

He was a staunch critic of the Narendra Modi-led ruling NDA government and in an article in UK-based The Guardian earlier this year he wrote that Modi’s “grandiose schemes – including large-scale urban sanitation, cleaning up the Ganges, interlinking rivers or creating ‘smart cities’ – smacks of gimmickry and empty sloganeering”.

Bidwai had been a Professorial Fellow at the Centre for Social Development, New Delhi, and also a Senior Fellow at the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library. He had also served as a member of the Indian Council for Social Science Research, the Central Advisory Board on Education, and the National Book Trust.

He was a long-time Fellow of the Transnational Institute, the Amsterdam-based organisation of international scholar-activists including Susan George and Walden Bello.

The notices that were served late last night evoked criticism from both the channel management and the media fraternity of Telangana.
The channel has also called for a protest in front of AP DGP’s office, Secretariat and all district headquarters today.

“Since the programme telecast on June 7 at around 8.30 pm contained material disturbing the public tranquillity, affecting the maintenance of law and order as it in violation of Section 5 and Rule 6 of cable TV news network Act, as the programme is defamatory deliberate, false with suggestive innuendos and half-truths,” the notice read.

Reacting to the notice, T News Channel CEO Narayan Reddy said AP police has no right to issue notices even before verifying authenticity of the footage scientifically.

“We are going to lodge a complaint with the President, Prime Minister, Governor and Press Council of India. Issuing the notice itself is wrong. AP Police has not right to issue such notice. They cannot curtail the freedom of press,” Reddy told PTI.

The notice also asked the channel management to reply within three days that why an appropriate legal action should not be initiated against them.

Condemning the police’s move, Telangana Union of Working Journalists in statement requested scribes to “raise the voice against this undemocratic, unconstitutional and disrespectful approach of AP CM”.

Erodgan said New York Times would face dire consequences if it criticizes the US administration in the same way it does with Turkey.

Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan slammed the New York Times newspaper on Monday for publishing an editorial on May 22 accusing the president of attacking the media in the country.

“As a newspaper, you [the New York Times] should know your place,” he said in a televised speech in Istanbul. “You are meddling in Turkey’s affairs by writing something like this. By publishing this editorial, you are overstepping the limits of freedom,” he added.

In its editorial, the New York Times claimed that Erdogan had a long history of intimidating and co-opting the Turkish media. “Erdogan appears increasingly hostile to truth-telling. The United States and Turkey’s other NATO allies should be urging him to turn away from this destructive path,” the editorial read.

“Who are you? Can you write such a thing [writing a critical editorial] against the U.S. administration? If you do, [the administration] would immediately do what is necessary,” Erdogan said during a panel organized by a think-tank in Istanbul.

Moreover, this is not the first time that Erdogan has clashed with the New York Times. In September, the Turkish president also criticized the U.S. daily for running a story claiming that Turkey is one of the biggest sources of recruits for the Islamic State group.

New Delhi: President Pranab Mukherjee has said the Bofors arms scandal of the 1980s was more of a “media trial” and none of the charges have been proved in any Indian court.

Mukherjee, a former defence minister, made the remarks in an interview with Dagens Nyheter newspaper ahead of an official visit to Sweden next week.

“The first point is no Indian court has given a verdict on it, and though the process of trial is going on…unless somebody, some authoritative institutions describe it as a scandal and punish it, how could you say that it is a scandal,” he said.

“You may have some doubt, you may have some suspicion, but that’s not the proof,” Mukherjee said in response to a question whether a scandal such as the Bofors affair could be avoided in future.

“The so-called scandal which you talk of, yes, in the media, it was there. There was a media trial. But I’m afraid, let us not be too much carried by publicity,” he said.

“But up to now, no Indian court has given any decisive verdict about the alleged scandal.”

Relations between Sweden and India were seriously damaged when allegations surfaced that Swedish arms manufacturing company Bofors had paid $640 million as kickbacks to secure a $1.3 billion contract to sell 410 howitzers to the Indian Army.

The scandal contributed to then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s defeat in the 1989 parliamentary polls. Mukherjee, a senior leader of the Congress, was a close confidante of Gandhi, who was assassinated in 1991.

Mukherjee asserted during the interview that it was “yet to be to be established that there was a scandal”. He further said that despite the scandal, the Bofors howitzers were prized by the army.

“I was the defence minister of the country long after Bofors, and all my generals certified that this is one of the best guns we are having. Till today, the Indian Army is using it,” he said.

The Bofors howitzers played a key role in the campaign to push back Pakistani troops who occupied strategic heights in the Kargil sector of the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir in 1999.

New York: As Prime Minister Narendra Modi- led government marks its first year in office on Tuesday, American media has taken a critical view of his accomplishments, saying his flagship ‘Make in India’ drive is “so far mostly hype”, job growth remains sluggish amid “outsize expectations”.

“India’s Modi at One Year: ‘Euphoria Phase’ Is Over, Challenges Loom,” reads a headline in the Wall Street Journal of an article on Modi’s first year as Prime Minister.

“A year after Indian voters handed Narendra Modi a once-in-a-generation mandate for change and economic revival, messy realities are sinking in,” the WSJ report said.

It said that Modi’s ‘Make in India’ drive, aimed at supercharging manufacturing growth, ” is so far mostly hype”.

It cited economic parameters like exports to say that the “economy is merely limping along”.

Inflation-adjusted lending for capital investment last year fell to a level not seen since 2004, it said adding that exports were down for the fifth straight month in April, corporate earnings were dismal and foreign institutional investors have pulled around USD 2 billion out of Indian stocks and bonds in May so far.

The New York Times, in a news analysis, said Modi must face the reality that much of his agenda is still only potential.

“From abroad, India is now seen as a bright spot, expected to pass China this year to become the world’s fastest-growing large economy. But at home, job growth remains sluggish. Businesses are in wait-and-see mode. And Modi has political vulnerabilities, as parliamentary opposition leaders block two of his central reform initiatives and brand him ‘anti-poor’ and ‘anti-farmer’,” the NYT article titled ‘After a Year of Outsize Expectations, Modi Adjusts His Political Course for India’ said.

It said “most formidable of all is a problem” Modi has “made for himself: outsize expectations that he would sweep away constraints to growth in India, like stringent laws governing labour and land acquisition.

The NYT quoted senior vice president at leading Indian garment exporter Orient Craft’s Vimarsh Razdan as saying that the Modi government’s “image became larger than they themselves.

“They have become superheroes. And everyone knows superheroes don’t exist,” he said in the report.

The WSJ article said that while Modi has swaggered across stages from New York to Paris to Sydney, helping put the country back on investors’ maps, “on other key fronts, Modi has moved less decisively, frustrating investors who hoped for bolder change after last year’s election.”

His government has avoided privatising state-run banks and companies, which could trigger unpopular job cuts.

Despite vows to improve India’s reputation for unpredictable tax collection, the government has hit investors with demands for back taxes they say they should not have to pay, it said.

The leading US dailies did give credit where due to the Modi government, saying as he marks the anniversary of his swearing in, he can point to some accomplishments.

The WSJ report said Modi has allowed more foreign investment in railways and defence and helped cut red tape.

His government has also deregulated fuel prices and permitted private competition in coal mining–“market-friendly moves designed to attract investment.”

His administration has also helped open millions of bank accounts for the poor and created new pension and insurance programs.

It quoted Krish Iyer, president and chief executive of Wal-Mart Stores Inc in India, as saying that the company is “seeing a lot of progress in ease of doing business. We feel encouraged by the market- and consumer-driven policies of the government.”

The NYT analysis said chief executives feel that since Modi came to power, India’s business culture has “indeed changed”.

“They rejoice that they no longer have to notarize all documents submitted to the government and say that it is far easier to find bureaucrats at their desks during the workday,” it said.

“By most measures, India’s economy has had a good year,” the NYT report said adding that India is heavily reliant on imported oil, and plunging prices have cut the cost of government fuel subsidies, allowing the authorities to rein in a chronic budget deficit.

Inflation fell to 4.87 per cent in April and foreign direct investment has risen by more than 25 per cent, to USD 28.8 billion in the 2014-15 fiscal year.

It noted other “flurry of changes” that the Modi government introduced including deregulating prices for diesel, petroleum and cooking gas, and raising limits on foreign investment in the defense and insurance sectors to 49 per cent.

Coalfield leases, found to have been sold at artificially low prices, were reallocated through a transparent process as were telecom spectrum allocations, it said.

Kathmandu: A section of the Indian media has made news in Nepal — for the wrong reasons.

The electronic media in particular faces charges of sensationalism at a time when the Himalayan nation is recovering from the deadly scars of the April earthquake that left more than 8,500 people dead.

In Kathmandu, few hide their feelings vis-a-vis the Indian media.

“There is a lot of resentment against Indian journalists because of the biased approach they took to cover the tragic event,” Dinesh Gautam, deputy chief executive officer of Probiotech Industries, Nepal’s prominent feed industry, told IANS.

The main reason for the anger towards certain media, especially two prominent Hindi news channels, was the “insensitive” reportage following large-scale deaths and destruction, he said.

The one question which Indian TV reporters kept asking and which is the focus of much of the criticism is: “How are you feeling?”

“What would be your reaction to this question when you lose a family member in a disaster?” banker Nira Shrestha asked this IANS correspondent. She said there should be some sensitivity towards such incidents.

“If somebody is under trauma or lying on a stretcher with multiple injuries, you cannot pose silly questions. This is the main reason for the anger against the Indian media,” Shrestha said.

The oft-repeated remarks by Indian media commentators which created revulsion in Nepal was that it was not the earthquake but the buildings which killed people.
Narrating an incident, Nepalese journalist Ujjwal Risal said one of the survivors was so angry with the questions from journalists that he angrily pushed aside the microphone of a reporter of an Indian news channel.

He said lots of international journalists flocked to Nepal to report on the disaster.

“Though the international media played a major role to get immediate worldwide attention towards the tragedy, it’s only Indian news channels that faced flak. There was no problem with BBC News, CNN, Al Jazeera and even the local ones which also covered the quake widely,” Risal, who has been publishing a fortnightly news magazine for over a decade, told IANS.

Kathmandu-based leading news channel Kantipur Television was operating from a makeshift tent as one of its buildings got damaged.

Local entrepreneur Bhagwati Prasad said: “As Nepal is rebuilding, the Indian media outlets should come back and focus on voluntary agencies — national and international — involved in rehabilitating people. It has shown the heart-rending videos and not the human interest stories.”

Actress Michelle Yeoh, famous for her roles in James Bond film “Tomorrow Never Dies”, visited quake-hit villages on the outskirts of Kathmandu on May 15-17 to see the rehabilitation work undertaken by ‘Live to Love’ foundation of Buddhist leader Gyalwang Drukpa, the spiritual head of the 1,000-year-old Drukpa Order based in India and Nepal.

“You have to inspire through your writings the international community that quake-ravaged Nepal needs immediate help,” Yeoh told IANS.

Thiruvananthapuram: Former union minister and Congress leader Shashi Tharoor has again courted controversy, this time by accusing the media of being “self-appointed liars and scum”.

However, as his comments Wednesday kicked up a furore, he sought to clarify that he had attacked “only those who put exploitation of tragedy above justice”.

“I’ll speak to the police, not to self-appointed liars and scum,” he remarked while responding to a media person’s query here.

The lawmaker was asked why his aides were allegedly not speaking the truth in the case relating to the mysterious death of his wife Sunanda Pushkar, in the wake of a Delhi court allowing the police Wednesday to conduct a lie-detector test on three “suspects” in the case.

“It suits gutter journalists 2 pretend I attacked their entire fraternity. I attacked only those who put exploitation of tragedy above justice,” the former Union minister tweeted Wednesday morning.

In a Facebook post, Prasar Bharati CEO lists the challenges of working with the public broadcaster and lashes out at arrogant ‘media stars’.

In a Facebook post, Prasar Bharati Chief Executive Officer and former culture secretary Jawhar Sircar lists the challenges of working for a public broadcaster and lashes out at journalist Rajdeep Sardesai.

The post was apparently in response to certain comments Sardesai had made during journalist and author Nalin Mehta’s book launch in Delhi last week.

Sircar also tweeted out a piece headlined “Thank You Barkha, Arnab, Rajdeep And All You Senseless Pieces Of Disgrace: You’ve Done It Again” that spoke about the Indian media’s reporting in Nepal.

Thank You Barkha, Arnab, Rajdeep And All You Senseless Pieces Of Disgrace: You’ve Done It Again http://t.co/zu9YCng9Ml